Mother says that Clemen’s jocular, disrespectful, wild character has been his downfall; he never should have ridiculed the general on the radio, much less insulted him — mocking his personal defects, repeating jokes about him that are told on the street, even making fun of Doña Concha. That’s why many other professionals and radio announcers who spoke on the radio in support of the uprising have not been sentenced to death, only Clemen — he even joyfully broadcast the news of the general’s supposed demise. According to Father, it is the curse of Uncle Lalo.
In this city, we are breathing anger, mourning, and fear. Father managed to speak to Memito Trigueros, a member of the condemned men’s legal defense team, who told him it was a summary triaclass="underline" each lawyer had only ten minutes to argue his case, sentences were dictated at two in the morning, and by five the general had rejected requests for an appeal. Memito confirmed that the war council has not been adjourned, that they will meet again tonight to pass judgment on the rest of the coup participants, for the list is long and includes many who are in custody and others who are still at large.
I have been moving heaven and earth to find out if Pericles is still at the Central Prison. I managed to speak on the phone with Colonel Palma, the director: he assured me my husband was there, and perfectly fine, but that visiting privileges have been suspended until further notice, he said I must understand that these are extraordinary times. It’s odd, but instead of arrogance, which is what I expected, I had the impression that Palma was frightened. I mentioned this to Mingo, who dropped by the house for a cup of coffee after lunch. He explained that there is much unease, fear, and mistrust among the officers in the army for, as it turns out, more of them than anyone could imagine were aware of or involved in the coup. As if this were not enough, Mingo told me, everybody also knows full well that Ambassador Thurston turned Tito Calvo over to the general after receiving a promise of clemency, that many of the officers who took part had recently returned from special courses in the United States, like Jimmy, and it would be not be surprising if the majority of the top brass saw these executions as the desperate thrashings of a drowning man, assuming the Americans have already turned their back on him completely. That’s what I like sometimes about talking to Mingo, it’s as if Pericles himself were explaining to me what was going on.
Mingo also told me that among those executed was one Lieutenant Mancía, a commander of the detachment that was supposed to ambush the general on his way back from the beach, and apparently the general owed his life to him because Mancía let him get to the Black Palace, thanks to Father Mario’s efforts. Poor lieutenant! The general doesn’t forgive the least hint of betrayal nor does he like to owe anything to a subordinate, that’s what Pericles has always said. That came up this afternoon while Carmela and Chelón and I were eating cemita cakes and drinking coffee on the porch facing the garden and discussing the events of the morning; the sun was starting to go down, the heat was letting up a bit, and we were making fun of Nerón snoring. Chelón brought up the time the general invited him to the Presidential Palace, around 1936, a few weeks after he executed Lieutenant Baños, which upset us all so much at the time because the poor young man had done nothing but mouth off in a drunken outburst, yet the general had wanted to establish a precedent of zero tolerance for criticism from within the ranks of the army. “He likes to speak about the beyond, the invisible world, but he has a very strange relationship to death, he denies it has any meaning, and he has made a hodgepodge, to suit his needs, of many Eastern doctrines, especially those dealing with reincarnation, that’s why he says it is worse to kill an ant than a man because the man will reincarnate and the ant will not,” Chelón said. Then he added: “He was cajoling me, asking me about the heavenly bodies, about the development of the chakras, about traveling through time to remember previous incarnations, for he’d heard that I was knowledgeable about these things; but I was cautious, I pretended to be a curious neophyte, I didn’t want him to take an aversion to me if he discovered that I knew more about some subjects then he did. In any case, he didn’t like me and never invited me again.” “Fortunately,” Carmela said. Then I recalled, without mentioning a word of it to my friends, what Pericles told me the morning of the first of February, 1932, as he was about to get into bed after being up all night: at dawn, when he arrived at the Presidential Palace from the cemetery to give his eyewitness account that Martí and the other communist leaders had been executed, he found “the man” in his office, his eyes red and moist, as if he were suffering a bad conscience, trying to expiate his guilt for his crime, aware that he had stepped over a line and that there was no going back. Those tearful eyes, that expression of weakness in the face of the first executions of his political career, is a secret Pericles has always kept, one he told only me in the privacy of our bedroom. I now wonder if that silence might be what’s kept him alive.
Fugitives (II)
1
“I almost fell and broke my ass!” Clemen exclaims, still trying to catch his breath after their mad dash and collapsing into the seat next to Jimmy in the first row of a half-empty train car, behind all the other passengers.
“Brother, shame on you for speaking that way!” Jimmy admonishes him, then looks at him disapprovingly. He is sitting next to the window. “What is the matter with you?”
Clemen turns and look around, afraid somebody may have heard.
“Forgive me, Father. I repent.,” he says, still panting, but with a mischievous twinkle in his eyes after verifying that no other passenger could possibly have heard him over the loud clattering of the train. “I meant to say I almost fell on the stairs. ”
“Your appearance is reprehensible, Brother,” Jimmy says, as he checks to make sure his own cassock has not come unbuttoned.
They ran onto the train just as it was pulling out of the station to avoid the National Guard and prevent anybody from recognizing them at the ticket window.
“What do you expect?” Clemen grumbles, whispering in Jimmy’s ear. “After almost a week shut up in that attic, be grateful we didn’t get cramps.” Then he suggests: “We should look for a compartment.”
They are sitting and facing the direction the train is moving. Jimmy again looks at the other passengers scattered around the car, then at the mountains through the window, and says:
“We’ll wait for the conductor, he’ll find us one.”
Clemen is wearing gray trousers and a white shirt; he’s carrying a backpack. Jimmy is draped in a black cassock; a large crucifix is hanging around his neck and he has a Bible in his hands.
“Good morning, Father,” says a woman entering the car holding a little girl by the hand; she immediately crosses herself.
“Good morning, daughter.”
Clemen adopts a docile expression and smiles like an idiot. Jimmy looks at him and whispers in his ear:
“You don’t have to make yourself look like a mongoloid. Not all sacristans are mongoloids.”
“Let me play my part the way I think I should,” Clemen responds, irritated, into Jimmy’s ear. “I’ve got more experience in these things than you.”
“Sure doesn’t seem like it. ”
Clemen takes advantage of Jimmy looking out the window to poke the crown of his head with his middle finger, right in the middle of his new tonsure.